Erosion of traditional ecological knowledge in Hungary, Central-Europe

The goal of our research was to study the erosion of traditional ecological knowledge related to wild plant species. The survey was made among Hungarians in two semi-traditional villages (Sztána and Zsobok) in Translyvania, Romania. We studied the knowledge of three age groups, preferably in lineages (grandparents, parents and children) by semi-structured interviews. The set of species was randomly chosen from the total list of known wild plant species, adding randomly some dominant species that were not yet recorded as known by locals. Species were shown on pictures (after testing efficiency of recognition). Grandparents had a deeper, than expected knowledge. Our preliminary results suggest, that there are  big differences between generations. The knowledge depended on people’s age, type of work, hobby and connection to the settlement. We found, that the changing socio-economic environment resulted in a considerable loss of traditional knowledge.